Recipes do not have patent protection, yet there is plenty of innovation in restaurants.

There are many paths to an innovation. I don't think the first person deserves such a monopoly. American IP law, in combination with the generally letigious society, has always seemed like a net source of innovation friction...

Creating a new recipe doesn’t involve billions of dollars in research as is the case in pharma.

A company that spends billions of dollars in research assumes they will be able to recoup the cost by having a monopoly on the drug they developed. If however competitors can flood the market with the same drug, they cannot recoup the cost and will subsequently go bankrupt.

Without the proper incentives you can’t expect companies to pursue strategies that will lead to bankruptcy.

I'm fine with that. Funding drugs based on profit potential is hugely distorting. E.g., Oxycontin. Or the whole pharmaceutical sales and promotion apparatus. Or the way it's much easier to fund something that mitigates a problem instead of curing it.

We could publicly fund pharmaceutical research. Indeed, I suspect we'd be better off publicly funding it on cost terms alone. Global pharma research was $186 billion in 2019. [1] The US spends over $100 billion more on drugs compared with other countries' per-capita spending. [2] The current opioid crisis costs nearly $80 billion/year, [3] and was kicked off by a prescription opioid boom [4] driven by the promotion of Oxycontin. [5]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/309471/randd-spending-sh...

[2] https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-...

[3] https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/opioids/opioid-overdos...

[4] https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/

For pharma specifically, trade secrets could be a decent alternative. Coke comes to mind as a success story in that regard - if it was protected by a patent, we’d be awash in cokes made by someone other than Coca-Cola company because patents expire. Instead, it’s a trade secret that can be kept indefinitely.

You of course get a lot of imitation cokes and that’s great! More consumer choice. With Pharma, the idea is that you get generics after the patent expires. However, an interesting “what if” to ponder - what if the resources that go into generics went instead into the coke-wannabes of the pharma and actually resulted in more innovation? We’ll never know.

Medicine development should be sponsored by the government anyway. Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it. This is an unconscionable status quo.

Public funding is fine for when your end-goal is known. In medicine, the end-goal is known: cure/manage condition X, which will save lives or improving quality of life of sufferers.

Optimising for patentable, innovative techniques is no longer a distraction (because those aren't needed to "protect your investment"). Optimising for ongoing therapy rather than a one-off/infrequent cure is no longer a distraction because you already got your money from the government and ain't getting any more. You can just focus on getting the job done quickly, with the cheapest techniques available (though boring they might be), and with the cheapest possible total cost of running the therapy start-to-end.

> Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it.

And still, Moderna and BioNTech came up with vaccines for COVID-19, not therapies.

That's a great development which I welcome whole-heartedly, but I don't think this diminishes my broader argument. There are still many conditions besides COVID-19 that only have a therapy available but no cure because of business reasons.

> There are still many conditions besides COVID-19 that only have a therapy available but no cure because of business reasons.

Name three, and give reasons to believe that there's no cure for business reasons. If you can't name at least three (of the "many conditions"), then how can you be so sure of this?

#1) Psychedelics/psilocybin for mental health. Cost basically $0 to produce but the US Mental Health industry was a $225B industry in 2019. Now though big pharma sees the writing on the wall, so is inventing patented variations (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/9445723...) because otherwise these natural substances that people have been taking for thousands of years wouldn't be "safe".

#2) Oxycontin. We have far better cures for short-term pain management. A 1996 internal email from Sackler: "get an audience for our patent infringement suits so that we are feared as a tiger with claws, teeth and balls, and build some excitement with prescribers that OxyContin Tablets is [sic] the way to go.15" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234149/)

#3) Unnecessary procedures (440k/deaths year from medical errors -https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5234149/)

1) Psilocybin research was, and it probably still is in most of the world, made ILLEGAL by governments. Another causality of the war on drugs, who wrongly imprisoned thousands and caused countless victims so that a few politicians get re-elected.

2) > We have far better cures

So you’re saying there are cures. Great then. Please re-read the gp's question. For 3) as well...

I don't think this is a good counterexample given the very specific circumstances involved & clear requirements to get a vorking COVID vaccine ASAP.

OK, do you have some examples (not counter) then?

After a few years in medical research I learned a shocking truth: patents in medicine are killing more people than they are save. It’s an absolute disaster. Big pharma splintering into thousands of smaller players would be a huge improvement.

It turns out that most funding for innovation actually comes from the government. Even the esteemed Mr Musk has benefited from about 5 billion dollars of non-private money for his profitable ventures.

There is research that solidly backs this up. Taxpayers are bankrolling the industries but it's the shareholders who are reaping the rewards. It's further support for the argument that IP should not be private but rather commonly shared.

Recipes take skill to produce and in some cases significant effort to bring together exotic ingredients. That's not the case for media that can be copied almost effortlessly.

Outside of running restaurants, people who innovate in recipes tend to make money via either writing cookbooks or hosting TV shows. Both of which are protected by IP.

> a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention

This is a mis-statement of the anti-IP case. Given the abolishment of IP laws, creators are not prevented from benefitting from their invention. They merely no longer have the benefit of the state regulators in preventing others from following the inventor's example.

> Including any monetary benefits if they so choose.

The "monetary benefit" here is the power to exclude others from manufacturing the invention with the power of the state, and to compel society at large to pay for enforcement of this monopoly.

So Disney can steal the work of amateur animators and not pay them a dime. Great.

Disney originally got rich from animating public domain stories, like Cinderella and Snow White. These were the popular stories of the day that people grew up with. Now after nearly a century of Disney, who has bought Star Wars and Marvel, Disney owns all the stories people grow up with. They built up their IP moat using public domain stories, and have used IP law to maintain their incumbency.

To me, the solution is to let the cycle repeat. Let the next animation company start making stories about Spidier-Man or Luke Skywalker. Sure, keep the trademarks so you can't say "Marvels™ Spidier-Man", but John Smith should be able to take a crack at his version of Spider-Man just like Walt got his version of Cinderella.

> So Disney can steal the work of amateur animators and not pay them a dime. Great.

I'm pretty sure they'd have to hire their own animators in order to produce a product to sell. Theft is still a crime, we would be removing Disney's ability to use the police to shut down the work of amateur animators.

Disney does this already and will bury you in legal fees if you try to prevent it. Repealing IP laws would level the playing field.

Funny you mention this. Disney is stealing the work of others and refusing to pay them royalties anyway:

https://www.denofgeek.com/books/disney-refuses-to-pay-royalt...

Or you can "steal" disney's and not pay them a dime. Great.

I think that many creators would struggle to benefit if their creations can be trivially copied by others.

They might struggle to sell licenses to their ideas, given that license is merely permission to perform a trivial task they are equally prepared to perform sans license, they could always benefit by selling their creative labor as work on the market.

That would mean that artists were only able to make money if they are working directly for someone else. That doesn't seem fair.

> That would mean that artists were only able to make money if they are working directly for someone else.

Nonsense, they can sell their own artwork too.

Who is the "creator"? If it is someone who composed a song or wrote a book, that word makes sense; without them the song or book would not exist. (Ironically, copyrights for songs are often not owned by the people who composed them, because contracts with publishers often require selling the copyright to them. At the end, you may be forbidden to sing your own song without paying.)

But in patents, sometimes it is just a person who noticed that existing technologies X and Y could be used together, and filed the patent first. If not them, someone else would have noticed it somewhat later. Even worse, someone else may get the idea independently a few weeks later... and then be sued for using it. Actually, if you invent something, it is always risky to use it, because you can never be sure whether someone else didn't patent it before you. (Did you do an expensive research of existing patents? Maybe you used a wrong keyword.) (By the way, patents also sometimes do not belong to people who had the idea.)

If everyone who says they will stop creating new bits if they can't control people anymore, were to stop creating new bits, that would be a great world.

(Btw, an example for your question is to look up the origin of this thing we are using to communicate—the WWW)

Because if financial reciprocation is your first incentive to be creative you've already lost the mind game. If you are a creative, you will understand that sometimes we just like to do things...

You can't eat self-actualization, nor can you build houses from it. Sunshine and enjoyment of your work is not sufficient to sustain your body, not to speak of all the other needs that effectively require money to be fulfilled.

Then again, I work all week with little entitlement to the "intellectual property" I generate, but I still receive income for my work. Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market, and the time I spend doing it and its value to me is the situation most people are in.

Being able to extract substantial rent in effective perpetuity from e.g. some copyright you own is a luxury only afforded to a relatively small minority, and ideally I think only productive work should be awarded, not rent. That will incentivize productive work rather than rent seeking.

> Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market [...]

You're only getting paid because people have to pay you the market rate for your work. If a musician creates and records a song [1], releases it at market rates (say, 2 USD), and everyone can just copy it without repercussions, he won't be able to make a living, no matter how productive he is.

[1] Which entails many hours of work, plus equipment costs.

It shouldn't be surprising that an economy will grow to depend on copyright if it exists and is enforceable.

It's really a strange, indirect way to go about it, though. It doesn't in itself incentivize further work (a lot of the music I still regularly pay for was recorded by dead artists in defunct studios, so no incentive short of Frankenstein will compel them to make more) and it may or may not cover the investment the artist/studio made in terms of actual work and equipment costs.

The up front costs is in creating and recording the music, which consumers could pay for instead of copies. A lot of creative artists are already taking this approach with crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Patreon.

Even now, it's probably true for most musicians that sales of copies isn't particularly lucrative compared to concerts/work for hire/project contracts, while recordings have an ever increasing number of pockets to line before the artists get their take. It's a potentially infinite revenue source, so why not?

I've talked to a thousand people like this and generally they seem immune to logical conversations. If you are in the 1% who gets a nice fat check thanks to IP laws, hurray for you. I've been there too, it's a nice comfortable life. You can promote the Big Lie all you want, but any smart honest person will figure out eventually that IP is evil from every angle.

> I've talked to a thousand people like this and generally they seem immune to logical conversations.

Are you talking about me? Which part of my posts is not "logical"?

> If you are in the 1% who gets a nice fat check thanks to IP laws, hurray for you.

I'm not. Some people are able to hold opinions that don't directly benefit them. Inconceivable, right?

> You can promote the Big Lie all you want, but any smart honest person will figure out eventually that IP is evil from every angle.

That's not even an argument. And you're accusing me of being "immune to logical conversations"?

It is an argument. IP is evil/suboptimal from every angle. What happens when debating people who repeat tired tropes of “a musician won’t get paid” or “we won’t have new medicines” or “copying is stealing” is that you can never satisfy them because they aren’t discussing in good faith. They provide 3 angles, you refute those 3; they provide 3 more; you refute those; et cetera. There is no angle to support IP unless you are in the 1% and support it for selfish interests in maintaining the status quo, or you take the autocratic angle that it is important for a government to have more control over its people. Those are interesting debates to have, but discussing the logic and data about how IP is unjust and bad economics is not, because generally people just regurgitate “the Big Lie”, and it’s a waste of time talking to them. There’s plenty out there refuting any point in favor of IP, and simply thinking from first principles is a fast and simple way to arrive at the truth.

I do apologize for me jumping on you there and assuming bad faith, it’s just that most folks who raise similar points to you are coming from that, but wasn’t fair of me to assume the worst from you. I like your point about holding opinions that go against your own self-interest (being against IP has personally cost me a fortune), and I encourage you to delve more into this issue.

> Sunshine and enjoyment of your work is not sufficient to sustain your body, not to speak of all the other needs that effectively require money to be fulfilled.

You've neglected to argue as to why these needs should be artificially subsidized by the issuance of state-enforced monopolies for certain concepts.

> You've neglected to argue as to why these needs should be artificially subsidized by the issuance of state-enforced monopolies for certain concepts.

... What? Avicebron argued that "financial reciprocation" should not be a priority of a creator, I countered that idealism won't keep you alive for long, and that creators need to make money to be able to create. Your post is completely beside the point.

Why do they need special laws to subsidize their creation? People can pay them to make their work, that's historically how things were done. Now suddenly they need special laws so its illegal to take a photograph in public without permission? Of course they need to get paid in order to live and to work, so do I, so does everyone else. Can we now discuss why creators are so special that they get an entire class of quasi-property rights where enforcement is subsidized by the state?

> People can pay them to make their work, that's historically how things were done.

So who's going to pay them? Their employer? That raises two problems: 1) Creators can't be independent and self-employed anymore, and 2) how is their employer going to make enough money?

A rich patron? That's hardly a better system.

> So who's going to pay them? Their employer?

Whoever wants artwork, obviously.

> 1) Creators can't be independent and self-employed anymore,

Actually, there are plenty of independent creators who are either self-employed or work at a job.

> 2) how is their employer going to make enough money?

Presumably the reason they are an employer is their ability to run a successful enterprise.

> A rich patron? That's hardly a better system.

Why not?

> A rich patron? That's hardly a better system.

Many great works of art have come to us via this system. In our time, isnt that what Patreon is?

Recent successful companies have largely done so because of execution, not IP protection. They have had competitors trying the exact same idea who still lost. This is especially the case with the move to SaaS, even copyright isn't so important as in the days of packaged software. A lot of the unicorns innovated on business model, and business models aren't protected anyway.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang explains an alternative model of innovation in his talk An Alternative to the American way of Innovation[1].

The over-simplified summary is that instead of worrying about the losing the monopoly protection of copyrights and patents - which are expensive to enforce and often bypassed - consider the new types of innovation that become possible when you have access to the all of the knowledge that was previously locked behind IP monopolies.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39fhrGjr4U

> a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention.

Do you mean a world where YouTube takes money from creators and give it to corporations that claim ownership of public domain music, or do you mean independent artist who gets zero money from their Spotify plays, since the three company cartel of record companies have forced streaming services to pool the artists’ money and then give most of that money to the biggest artists fronted by those same three record companies..?

This abuse is wholly dependent on the outrageous IP laws we live under.

Which creators are you talking about?

Real innovators care about the journey not the money. Some money is needed sometimes to get or keep going, we have this money, we have plenty of money.

We can also chose to reward innovators both for the effort and the result. It should be in proportion tho, an invention that makes you the owner of the world is not desirable for anyone else.

And finally, the most ironic, you don't have innovation if you are renting it. (they don't even have to let you rent it) Its a well crafted con that turns you into a subject to be exploited in any way the ~~innovator~~ owner chooses.

> I am genuinely interested in understanding how we could have innovation in a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention. Including any monetary benefits if they so choose.

they are entitled to the benefits of their creation. by executing their idea better than others. and selling that execution competitively.

> I am genuinely interested in understanding how we could have innovation in a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention.

We've had innovations for thousands of years without IP. Not to mention that Linux and GNU exist for a reason. Do you think people will stop writing books, making music, etc without IP laws.

> Including any monetary benefits if they so choose.

How does removing IP laws prevent you from profiting from your work?